alive and well......in minnesota!

I know some of you have been wondering where in the world I have dissapeared to. Well, the answer is that we packed up our family, said goodbye to Utah and moved ourselves to Minnesota! Eric got a new job here (with a scrapbooking company of all things!) and it was too good of an opportunity to pass up. He left the beginning of November while I stayed behind and got all of our stuff packed up. Then on the weekend before Thanksgiving, Eric came back to load up the moving truck and start making the 1200 mile trek across the country to our new home. I knew there was no way I was willing to spend 20 hours in the car with Cannon, so he and I flew. It was totally worth every single penny to do that.

Eric took a few pictures of their adventure. The weather was terrible and he encountered many storms and setbacks. Charlie remembered riding in the moving van from Idaho to Utah so he was excited to do it again. We tried to tell him that this ride was going to be much longer, but he was insistent on riding with daddy.
Snowy roads for miles and miles.

There were several long stretches where they never even got over 15mph. They eventually had to stop on their first day in Laramie, WY because the road was closed. It took them over 9 hours to go just 350 miles.

One of the many wrecks that they saw on their way

Our car after the long trip.

They made a stop at Cabela's on the way to get an elk sandwich. (Yuck. Good thing I was not there because I definitely would have vetoed this decision!)

Crossing into Nebraska....

Ahhhhhh. After 3 days of driving, they finally reach Minnesota.

Since I previously blogged about how much I loved the Utah mountains, I thought it would be amusing to share this photo. This is the big ski hill here in MN. How sad.

And this is the view from our new place after our first snow storm. We now have about 12 more inches since this picture was taken. It is beautiful. Very cold, but beautiful nonetheless.

We are getting settled in and exploring our new surroundings. The school district here is one of the best and that was a huge factor in our decision to move. Charlie loves his new school and he has an awesome teacher. Both of the boys have done great with the move and we are feeling good about our decision to move. Just another part of our adventure. Sometimes I wonder what could possibly be next. I never would have thought that we would be moving to Utah a year ago and now here we are in Minnesota. Life can be crazy sometimes. But we are embracing it and loving (almost) every single moment!

legoland!......

After begging to go to Legoland for over a year, Charlie finally got his wish. Pake (my grandpa) passed away and we went to California for the funeral. Since we were in the area, my parents wanted to take the boys there for an early Christmas present. Charlie was beyond excited. We couldn't really keep it a secret because he already knew Legoland was in California and once I told him we were going there for the funeral he immediately started talking about it.

These pictures are not great by any means. Let's just say that 2 busy boys running around Legoland do not have any time to stop for the camera.

First stop was miniland. I think this was the part Charlie was looking forward to the most. They had the entire vegas strip, the french quarter, NY skyline, San Francisco and the Sydney Opera House completely recreated in legos. It was pretty incredible.

Charlie was also really excited about driving the cars and getting his own driver's license. He wasn't too good at steering the car and I think he only got about half way around the track.

The park was not very busy at all which was perfect! We didn't have to wait in line to get on the rides and if we wanted to go again, they would let us stay on the ride and go again. The weather was also great. We couldn't have picked a better day to visit.

There is a reason they do not charge for kids under 3. They pretty much cannot do ANYTHING. Cannon was about an inch too short to ride any of the rides. He would get so ticked off when he would see Charlie getting on all the rides and he couldn't tag along. There were lots of breath holding incidents. Poor dude.

Charlie LOVED the rollercoasters. I was so surprised. As we were going up the first time he said, "I think I might be getting scared!" but then he chilled out and enjoyed the ride. He immediately asked to go again.

This is the only ride that Cannon could go on and he was totally in love. He smiled the entire time and then he started to put his arms up in the air and yelled "wheeeee!"

A lot of people told us that Charlie was at the perfect age for Legoland and they were completely right. He was able to go on all the rides and they were fun without being too scary. We enjoyed six hours of lego bliss and everybody left with a smile on their face.

halloween 2010....

We knew for a while that Charlie wanted to be a lego minifigure for Halloween. I mean really, we all knew that was coming, right? And of course, I looked high and low and nobody actually sells a lego minfigure costume. So, once again, we were going to be making Charlie's costume this year just as we did last year and the year before. This costume was quite the project and as we made our 23rd trip to Hope Depot to get yet another supply, Eric and I looked at each other wondering if we were completely crazy. Charlie was thrilled so that makes it all worth it I suppose. The costume was a pretty big success. Everywhere we went people were commenting about it. Charlie even won the costume contest at his school and was quite proud of himself.

Here in Utah, everybody went trick-or-treating on Saturday. We weren't happy about this but we didn't want the kids to miss out, so we followed their tradition and went on Saturday. (Utah even celebrated the 4th of July on Saturday instead of Sunday this year, CRAZY!!!) It started to rain at about 4pm and it didn't let up for hours. Bummer.



Neither of the kids were having much fun in the rain, so we headed to the mall. Along with everybody else in the city. It was a total zoo and most of the stores were out of candy early.
We gave up and headed to Target to just buy some candy. The kids were happy with that. We ended the night with a quick dinner at In-N-Out, and the adults were happy with that!

Hope you all had a fabulous Halloween!

we finally made it to the zoo.....

I heard that the zoo was fabulous here but we had never made the effort to go. There is a funny story of why we ended up going on this day. I used to work with a gal named Christine at Archiver's in Boise. She moved but I never realized it was to Utah and I especially never expected to run into her at Costco a few weeks ago! She has an annual pass to the zoo and invited us to tag along with them when the kids were on Fall Break. (on yet another note, is fall break just a Utah thing? I don't ever remember getting 3 days off in October for "fall break") Anyway, we quickly accepted the invitation and we had a great day. She has a daughter that is also in kindergarten and a son that is about 6 months older than Cannon.

Charlie was quick to do his standard pose and cheesy smile whenever the camera pointed his way. He loved the giraffes and we were able to get pretty close to them.

Cannon did pretty good in his stroller for a while but he finally decided that he needed to get out to explore with the big kids. He did much better staying by me than I expected him to be. He kept trying to lead the way and then he would turn around and yell at the rest of us "Come on!" I think he has heard me say that to him about a thousand times as he usually thinks the walk from our apartment to the car is a 15-minute nature walk. I am constantly standing there with my arms full of groceries trying to hurry him along.



And of course, what would a trip to the zoo be without a ride on the carousel? We had to wait in line a little while before our turn and Charlie had scouted out that turkey. He really wanted it and I was thrilled we were able to get it for him.
Cannon had the praying mantis, but he couldn't care less.
We didn't get to see everything because naptime came much too quickly, but we were happy to have finally made the trip to the zoo. Another great day spent with my two cute boys.